


World Enough and Time

by chelseagirl



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Peggy Carter as Captain America
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:22:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelseagirl/pseuds/chelseagirl
Summary: Daniel Sousa worships Captain America, aka Peggy Carter, from afar.  When he's hospitalized with a war injury, a friendship grows.  But could it ever be anything more?AU inspired by the cover art of Exiles #3, but not set in quite that same universe.





	World Enough and Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [muscatmusic18](https://archiveofourown.org/users/muscatmusic18/gifts).



1.

Without a doubt, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Daniel Sousa, Private First Class, gazed at the picture of Captain America posted outside the commissary.

“Funny that an Englishwoman is America’s greatest hero,” said his buddy Sammy. “Strange they did that experiment on her – you’d’ve thought they’d have picked a man. And an American.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. Everyone knew the story. “You know they did. And that when the original guy they’d got was murdered, along with the scientist that developed it, that’s when Howard Stark stepped in.”

“But a dame?”

“Apparently this Peggy Carter was working closely with the project. I guess it was still a secret, ‘til after the big reveal, and they thought she fit the profile best.”

“And Stark’s got an eye for a pretty face.” Sammy looked the poster up and down, of the brunette beauty in her star-spangled costume, worn complete with combat trousers. “And pretty other things. Wish the outfit showed off her gams a little more.”

“I’m sure her legs are as perfect as the rest of her,” Daniel sighed.

“Hey, Sousa, ya think she’d go out with a guy like me?”

Daniel gave his friend a baleful glare. “No. Definitely not.”

Sammy shrugged. “Eh. The way she dresses, she probably likes the ladies herself, if ya know what I mean.”

“It’s her uniform,” came the terse reply.

Honestly, Daniel knew almost nothing about Captain America, or who she might like. All he knew was that her appearance at the USO show this Friday night promised to be the highlight of his week, month, and possibly lifetime. His girl back home had just written him that she’d gotten herself engaged to a fellow with a 4F exemption. She didn’t want to wait for someone who might or might not ever come home.

He couldn’t really blame her.

2.

The night of the show, Daniel found that he barely even noticed the leggy chorines who flanked her. Captain America, brunette goddess that she was, captured all of his attention. Afterwards, seated over beers at the canteen with Sammy and their other pal, Red, Daniel remained silent as the guys waxed eloquent over the beauty of the various dancers.

All he could think about was Peggy Carter. She’d come out twice, once dressed in her uniform, and again, clad in flowing robes and wearing the crown of the Statue of Liberty, but holding her shield aloft instead of a torch. Her red lips, her dark hair, her strong yet feminine beauty.

A month after the show, the rumor mill started. Captain America had left the USO, and was fighting alongside the Howling Commandos. Daniel longed for reassignment to the 107th Regiment, to whom the Commandos were attached. But he took what he could get, which was a training program for NCOs.

His intelligence and his attention to detail were quickly noticed, and promotion came swiftly. A year and a half after the night he’d gazed on Captain America from afar, Corporal Daniel Sousa found himself leading a detachment of men single file through a mountain pass, in the overly optimistic hope of providing relief to a group of Allied soldiers who were far outnumbered by Axis forces.

But when they’d made their way down the mountainside, they were met by cheers which seemed disproportionate.

“Look, Corporal Sousa!” said one of his men. “It’s the Howlers!”

And right behind his own detachment were the legendary Howling Commandos, led by Dum Dum Duggan with his bowler hat and Captain America herself, brandishing her shield.

Later, he’d remember little of the fighting. His detachment was in the thick of things, and he was running around, trying to keep his men together, trying to keep the advance going. In the press of things, he’d even forgotten that the object of his daydreams was there. And then, he felt the impact of what must have been a bullet, straight into his leg, and then he knew nothing.

He came around once, and inexplicably, unbelievably, she was there. “This one will live, but it looks like the damage to his leg is pretty severe. Make sure he gets to the field hospital.” They might not have been words that he’d dreamed of her saying, but her crisp English accent resonated warmly. “Hang on, corporal, we’ll get you help.”

In the field hospital, and later recovering in a military hospital in England, he thought of her often. But he never expected to see her again. When he did, she was dressed in a blue and red dress, with a red tilt hat and a brooch shaped like her shield.

“I hear you’ve been a model patient,” she said. “You’re one of the few we managed to get out that day. I’ve been keeping tabs on you and your fellow-survivors. Daniel Sousa, isn’t it?”

He tried to salute, which was faintly ridiculous for a man sitting up in bed. “Captain America, sir. Er, ma’am. Er, miss?”

“Peggy will do just fine. Or Agent Carter, if you’re going to insist on formality. But usually you Americans don’t. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

“All right, Peggy, then.” He was conscious of being at a significant disadvantage.

“Your family must have been delighted to hear that you’d survived.”

“My parents and my sisters, yes.”

“No wife? Sweetheart?”

“I had a girl. She married a guy who stayed stateside on a 4F deferment. Can’t say I blame her.”

Peggy Carter frowned. “I can. When the war began I was engaged to a man who worked in the Home Office. He’d been sitting out the war in an office in London. After my brother was killed, I realized what was important. I ran out on my own wedding to join the war effort.”

She was unbelievably beautiful, he thought. Her red lips had him mesmerized. But even more so, he was fascinated by what she had to say.

“Steve Rogers, the man whose place I took after he was killed – he fought to get into the army. He was underweight, under height, a little pipsqueak of a man. And he had the biggest heart of anyone I’d ever met. If he’d completed the program, his outside would have matched his inside – I saw the uniform they’d prepared for him. It’s his legacy I’m carrying on, and my brother’s.”

“Are you . . . bigger, too?”

“A few inches taller, about twenty pounds more of muscle, but disproportionately stronger. It works, apparently, a little differently with women – I suppose the lack of testosterone. Or Howard’s formula being not exactly the same as Dr. Erskine’s.”

They chatted for quite some time, and she came to see him again, twice, three times more over the next few weeks. He had the sense that somehow she felt relaxed with him, as though there was some commonality between them.

The fourth time she visited him, she said that she wouldn’t be back for awhile. She had a mission that she couldn’t talk about, and she’d been called out of the country.

He took a deep breath. “When I get out of here, if you’re back in England . . . would you have dinner with me?”

She remained expressionless, and he hurried to correct himself. “I’m sorry. I suppose every man asks that, and I’ve just been an incredible idiot.”

And now she smiled. “A surprising number of men have no particular interest in dining out with a woman who’s got ten times their physical strength.” She looked him over. “I’ve got a feeling you’re not one of them. There’s more to you than that.”

“They say I’ll be here for another couple of months, learning to walk with the prosthetic. After that?”

She took a card out of her purse, and handed it to him. “This number will always find me. I’m not certain where I’ll be in two months, but leave a message.”

3.

When he was discharged, he called the number. The woman on the other end promised to pass the message along. When he gave his name, her voice grew friendlier. “She’s been expecting your call. Leave a number where you can be found.”

“Well, that’s the problem. I’m out of the service, and I’ve been offered a job in New York. I’ve got to leave in a week.”

“She’s out of the country at the moment. Make certain to ring again when you have a number in New York – she’ll be in touch.”

He knew it had never been meant to be, but he couldn’t help but preen himself a little on the fact that the woman of his dreams had at least told her answer service about him.

4.

Overall, Daniel liked working for the SSR. He was a little bit lonely in New York – the fellows at work were welcoming, and included him when they went out for drinks after work. But his family was back in Minnesota, and somehow he just couldn’t start trying to meet a girl when his dinner date with Captain America was still on hold.

Even though he knew it would never happen.

He walked with a crutch, for stability, but he was sure of himself and refused to let it slow him down.

One day, he arrived a little bit late, due to a stalled subway train on his way into work. The office was all abuzz.

“What’s going on?” he asked Green, whose desk was next to his.

Green shrugged, but O’Rourke, across the aisle, said, “Captain America’s here. She’s in with the boss.”

Daniel couldn’t help himself; he straightened his tie. “ _The_ Captain America?”

“There’s only the one, from what I can tell,” said O’Rourke.

_She’s come to visit the office, she hasn’t been in touch, who knows if she even got my message?_

“Bet she’ll fall for Thompson, with him being so damn good looking,” muttered Green.

“Ah,” said O’Rourke, “I doubt she’s his type. I don’t see Jack Thompson with a woman who could lift him over her head with one hand.”

“She’s beautiful,” Daniel couldn’t stop himself from saying.

Just then, the door to the inner office opened, and out stepped Peggy Carter, accompanied by the far too handsome Thompson, and Dum Dum Duggan of the Howling Commandos.

 _Duggan, of course,_ thought Daniel. _They’ve been through so much together._

But Carter seemed to be looking around for something. Or someone, he thought, hope reviving. He noticed she was wearing a blue suit with a white blouse, the same red tilt fedora she’d been wearing in London, and as she drew closer, he could see the shield brooch.

And then she saw him, and her smile brightened.

O’Rourke and Green, and particularly Thompson, looked on with astonishment as she made her way directly to his desk. Duggan, though, smiled and, if Daniel wasn’t mistaken, gave him a wink.

He rose to greet her. She was taller than he was – the result of the super soldier treatment – but he realized she was also wearing heels.

“Corporal,” she said. “Or I should say, Agent Sousa. So glad to finally be in the same place at the same time.”

“Captain.” In the hospital, they’d been Daniel and Peggy, but here, they were formal again.

“I’m told that the Stork Room does a rather fine dinner. Shall we say 7:30?”

He nodded his assent, and she swept out the door, accompanied by Duggan.

When he turned his gaze away from the now-empty doorway, he found Green and O’Rourke staring at him, open-mouthed, while Thompson muttered, “Sousa gets the girl? Figures. Guy's just too good looking.”

5.

She met him there, wearing a beautiful red dress, with lipstick to match. And no Dum Dum Duggan in sight, he was relieved to see. He wore his best suit, and tried not to feel inadequate to the surroundings.

They ordered drinks; she took her Scotch neat. “I’m afraid I drank with the Howlies during the war, and it rather ruined me for properly feminine cocktails.”

All during dinner they talked, as freely and easily as they had in the hospital. The orchestra started playing, and he said, self-deprecatingly, “You can imagine I’m not really up for dancing.”

“It wasn’t dancing I had in mind,” she said, with a wicked smile.

His eyes widened.

“During the war I learned how quickly things can be snatched away from us. I’m staying at Howard Stark’s second-best penthouse, and I’d like you to come back and have a drink with me. I’m not inviting you to spend the night – that’s far too . . . Howard. But I should very much like to spend more time with you, and I’m afraid I’m rather too direct about things, these days.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. 

And shortly afterwards, Daniel Sousa found himself in the back of a taxi, sharing his first kiss with America’s greatest hero, and the most beautiful and brave woman he’d ever known.


End file.
